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IBM Maximo Application Suite vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Maximo Application Suite
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (5th)
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Maximo Application Suite and ServiceNow aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Maximo Application Suite is designed for Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and holds a mindshare of 12.1%, down 26.2% compared to last year.
ServiceNow, on the other hand, focuses on IT Service Management (ITSM), holds 13.7% mindshare, down 21.8% since last year.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Maximo12.1%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management6.7%
Infor CloudSuite6.6%
Other74.6%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow13.7%
JIRA Service Management6.8%
BMC Helix ITSM5.4%
Other74.1%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Antony Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Java Software Engineer at GPA
Asset management has become streamlined and decision-making is now driven by lifecycle data
The best features IBM Maximo offers are that it is very simple to deploy on OpenShift using Ansible playbooks. It also has excellent support for integration, is simple to configure, and the asset register is very straightforward. Work management and managing inventory are seamless. In terms of integration support, I have used preventive maintenance, work generation, accurate work execution planning, tracking actuals, and I can easily integrate with other tools and systems. IBM Maximo Suite gives me a single place where service cycles are standardized and tied to compliance. IBM Maximo has positively impacted my organization as it has been a very useful tool. It reduced human error by moving away from pen and paper-based scheduling. It saved cost by minimizing unexpected downtime of assets, with approximately 50% of time being saved. We have also reduced overwork among staff by removing redundant information and smoothing task flows. It helps us scale our team without micromanaging small issues.
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Structured workflows have improved SLA compliance and now support prioritized incident handling
I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good. The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We are very thankful to have IBM integrated with our own Legacy cloud-based system."
"When we integrated the Maximo DB with the BI tool, we were able to track and manage the inventory levels in a much more controllable way, and reduced the inventory levels significantly within one year."
"Reliable, very configurable, and it's all integrated in the same database."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"Provides great flexibility."
"We were doing all kinds of paperwork for every type of order and to maintain our assets but with the use of the IBM Maximo application, we can automate a lot of the processes."
"If it's not the best EAM product, it is one of the best out there."
"The way it can integrate with other applications and be a central hub for anything we need to do, plus the fact that it's cloud based, is huge for us."
"The solution is stable, scalable and easy to use."
"To me, just the initial interface is very intuitive and user-friendly and I think it's just going to be yards ahead of what we've been doing previously."
"It's great to do statuses or to review tasks."
"Very easy to implement and to respond to my clients' needs."
"Discovery has reduced, on average, the time to build/deploy devices within our environment by one hour. This may not seem like much but it adds up over time. It also reaps additional time savings with its ability to capture changes through subsequent discoveries over the life of the device."
"It just enabled us to see the whole organization as a single organization, which, especially for higher ed and places like that, just doesn't happen."
"I would rate ServiceNow nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"Vendor management needs enhancement."
"The solution is expensive and is quite difficult within this space."
"Many improvements are needed in the customer support service department because of delays in response, which are very costly."
"Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented."
"Inventory management, especially: item cards – I need to be able to track item balance and history back to a given date; inventory financial reports need a lot of enhancement; consignment stock management has an issue – raised with the vendor."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
"IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes."
"Scalability is good on the production side. It could be better performance on some of our lower environments, notably UAT for our global support estate."
"The level of complexity and the level of discovery are the two areas that can be improved. Its UI needs to evolve. They focus a lot on cool colors and other little things, which don't bring value in terms of functionality. They need to focus less on presentation and more on the functionality within the UI. Its discovery mechanism should be improved. There is a component in ServiceNow that discovers the assets, but it doesn't do an immediate discovery, and there is a lag. If I want to open a ticket for a laptop or an asset, that asset needs to exist within ServiceNow for me to be able to say that I need to have its disk space or memory increased. It is referred to as a CI or configuration item in ServiceNow. Sometimes, ServiceNow doesn't discover these items, and as a result, I cannot open a ticket and tag that system or asset. If a system was introduced to the environment last week and it is still not listed, it becomes a problem. I will either have to wait or manually enter that system or asset. So, if I have a laptop with only 8 GB of memory and I want to request 16 GB of memory, I won't be able to do that in ServiceNow because my system or asset hasn't been discovered yet. Discovery is not immediate, and there is a lag."
"The big area of improvement that I see is in the licensing model for the CreateNow app."
"Primary areas of inefficiencies and delays were related to change resistance and lack of support from the IT Team Lead and IT Manager level staff for involvement in ServiceNow design and training workshops, and lack of support for governing new process policies."
"We do a lot of relatively advanced stuff for the size that we are, but ServiceNow itself is so big and to some extent, there is a significant amount of complexity that you have, a big learning curve I would say, in order to really get on board."
"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."
"There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."
"Currently, we are finding it a bit difficult to monitor the subscriptions that are being used. The reporting feature related to this can be improved. Its ITOM functionality can be improved. BMC does a better job than ServiceNow in terms of capturing utilization and other such things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"IBM Maximo offers a licensing application, and you have to comply with the license."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."
"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."
"The solution is expensive."
"The CapEx version is great."
"ServiceNow is an expensive solution."
"It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise179
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
The only thing that I need from IBM Maximo is more simplicity. The application has been designed in a way that it is serving the enterprises. It needs to be simpler for the SMEs, or for the compani...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
There are different use cases for IBM Maximo that I work with mostly. We use it for complete asset management. Anything that comes into the asset repository, asset management, asset evaluation, any...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Maximo?
AWS is more recommended for IBM Maximo. You can go into Microsoft as well, but AWS is preferred. IBM also has their own cloud as well.
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow?
ServiceNow operates on a subscription-based pricing model with custom pricing based on modules, users, and business requirements. Pricing varies depending on modules such as ITSM and ITOM, and lice...
 

Also Known As

Maximo
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Hexagon AB, Infor and others in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). Updated: July 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.